Patients and visitors to Ealing Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will now be able to get a better understanding of the work it does through a new visual floor to ceiling installations that have been added to it.
The idea behind the illustrations following the return of visitors to the hospital after the second wave of the pandemic and the hospital wanted to find a way to reassure visitors of the treatment patients get as well as informing them about the equipment that is in use and the people caring for their loved ones.
Emergency Medicine Registrar Callum Kirk, who was the driving force behind the project, added: “ICUs are very dramatic and fast paced on TV shows but, in reality, it is often a slower more measured environment where small adjustments are made to patients’ conditions. They are generally calm places. There is a lot machinery around but it is important to remember there is a person in the middle of it all and it is the humans caring for them that helps them recover. ICU is much more than the machines.”
Intensive Care consultant Mike O’Connor said: “ICUs can look like something out of a science fiction film to first-time visitors. It can be a daunting environment for people especially when their loved one is critically unwell. Hopefully by demystifying some of the lines, tubes, monitors and kit relatives can focus on their loved one at the centre of it.
“Everyone visiting a relative or friend on the ICU receives a guide based on the mural illustrating a bedspace in the unit. It describes the roles of various professionals involved in the care of patients along with advice for relatives. The feedback from patients, relatives and friends has been really positive.”
